The X-mas Party

In the late night habitat that is my permanent weekend home I found myself immersed in the goings on of a social gathering somewhere in the not so vast city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This particular evening of merrymaking was to be a tribute to the commercialized institution known as Christmas. A largely thirty-something crowd, wearing ridiculous red and green sweaters adorned with snow flakes and reindeer, sipped bourbon laced eggnog, while the Yule log crackled in the fireplace and a Muzak version of Jingle Bells emanated from CD player sitting on top of the Victrola in the den. I was well on my way to intoxication, having scoffed three hash brownies and more than a few Sierra Nevada Celebration Ales when it occurred to me that amongst all the merriment someone had forgotten the most sexual of Christmas garnishes, the mistletoe. I would never have it be said of me that I neglected such detail, especially detail of a sexual nature. So, I took it upon myself to remedy the problem and set about trying to find a clump of what in Old High English was known as zein twig.

I searched all through the two story brownstone but alas there was not an ounce of mistletoe to be found. So, I improvised and took a sprig of parsley off one of the cheese platters, a length of dental floss from the upstairs medicine cabinet, and a thumb tack from the corkboard in the kitchen and hung my pseudo mistletoe in the entry way that led from the kitchen to the living room. I then positioned myself beside the door, smeared my lips with chap stick and waited to see who would come through.

My friend Luch was the first to pass by. He stopped and looked up at the greenery hanging in the doorframe.

“Why is there parsley hanging from the doorframe?” he asked.

“Get out of the way you nincompoop,” I said.

“Whatever, dickhead,” he said and headed towards a tray of assorted holiday sausages.

I’d heard the young lady I’d been taken with several weeks earlier at a Hawaiian theme bar and who had subsequently turned down my awkward advances was to attend this holiday shin dig. I pictured this blond beauty walking slowly up and gazing at the parsley and then at me. I’d smile. She’d beckon me over and I’d walk to her. “Kiss me,” she’d say, closing her eyes and I’d keep walking right on by.

This is what I’ve been gearing up to do my whole life, not the parsley and the girl but the keep walking part. I plan to keep walking and then to run, to build up so much momentum that when my heart finally stops I will continue on for thousands of years. Not until the ozone layer is finally peeled away and this earth is a baron ball of burning sand will I slow to and end but by then there won’t be anybody around to care and so neither will I.

I tilted my Sierra Nevada and drained it.

“I heard eating celery before oral sex makes it much better,” Luch said, to a small group gathered around him.

I opened another Sierra Nevada and scanned the room.

“You know those things your grandparents cleaned their glasses with?” a guy wearing a red and green bow tie and blue suit asked two women standing beside him.

“Old underwear?” I said.

“Not underwear,” the guy said, disgust in his voice.

Perhaps my grandparents aren’t conventional, a possibility I pondered early on when they encouraged me to runaway and join the circus after I said I admired clowns. They were also products of the Great Depression which would explain their thrift and the materials with which they chose to clean their glasses.

“You mean those little squares of tissue paper?” one of the women asked.

“Tissue paper is for wusses,” I said. “In medieval times they used dried bull scrotums to clean their glasses. They were absorbent and such practice was thought to restore virility to the sexually downtrodden.”

“They didn’t have glasses back then,” the bow tie guy said.

“Didn’t have glasses? They had glasses long before that. How do you think Jesus, who by the way was nearly blind, was able to pick the weevils out of his disciple’s beards?”

It was then that I spied her standing under my parsley, a black haired beauty in a tight wool skirt and patent leather shoes. Her skin was the color of coffee with just enough cream. Her eyes were electric blue green and lit up the room with a luminescence that might have been powered with the energy harvested from plugging into the mainframe of an acid trip.

“What is that?” she asked, poking my parsley with her index finger.

“Parselytoe, cousin to mistletoe, brother to stubbed toe,” I said.

“You’re funny,” she said, drunkenly.

“I’m funnier with my clothes off,” I said.

“Come here,” she said.

YES! It was just like my daydream and I obliged but unlike my daydream I didn’t walk on by. I met her under the parsleytoe and she gently took my head in her hands and then rammed her tongue down my throat. Our tongues tussled in one another’s mouths like two electric eels trapped in a breadbox.

“By God that was extraordinary,” I said, pulling back.

“I’m done with this party,” she said. “Want to come to another party and party with me.”

I dumped my eggnog in the nearby planter of a rubber tree. I hadn’t seen my dream girl and odds were she’d be with the fraternity type I’d seen her with the past weekend if she decide to show up at all. And so in that moment I would let any lingering daydreams of the blond dream girl go, which is my nature. She might have walked into that room wearing nothing but a tea towel and a smile and thrown herself at me and I would have walked away…okay, let’s not get crazy. Let’s just say I was done actively lusting after her. She had her chance and as they say life is short.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Where are you going?” my friend the Weasel asked.

“To party with this little vixen,” I said, wrapping my arm around her svelte waste.

“Want to come along?” she asked. “I have a really cute friend.”

“Sure,” the Weasel said.

“Cool,” she said. “I’m Mindy.”

“Right,” I said, grabbing a plate of hash brownies and stuffing them in pockets of my leather jacket.

* * *

We pulled up in front of a dilapidated duplex in what was considered one of the seediest neighborhoods in Harrisburg. It occurred to me then that following my parsleytoe love interest without evaluating her personality and potential for erratic behavior was a serious miscalculation in late night partying strategy. If need be I would have to feign illness and hightail it back to the Christmas party where at the very least a tray of assorted holiday sausages and bucket of bourbon laced eggnog awaited me.

“You live here?” I asked, finishing off the last of another bottle of Sierra Nevada.

“No, I don’t live here. This place is a dump. My friend told me there was a party here. “Come on,” she said hopping out of my Cherokee.

“This place is nasty,” the Weasel said.

“Don’t judge a slum by it sluminess,” I said. “There could be good folks behind that door that’s falling down over there.”

“That place is condemned,” the Weasel said.

“Oh,” I said.

“What the Hell. I can have fun at any party,” the Weasel said.

It’s the Weasel’s nature to go with the flow, to be as socially smooth as butter and melt effortlessly into the frying pan of conversation. My entrances often engender the sensation of lurching forward in an automobile after slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting a bag lady pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans. It’s the head snapping inevitability of my actions, my unexpected mannerisms and meandering tongue that leave me on the outside of those cozy little circles that predictably form during the course of a social gathering. You would think it would make me feel like an outsider. It does and I like it.

“Yeah, what the Hell, a party is a party-”

Somewhere I heard what sounded like a scream followed by what sounded like a gunshot. I was glad I’d foregone the fashion statement of aesthetically pleasing belt ornamentation and worn my brass knuckles belt buckle.

“Then again,” the Weasel said.

“Come on,” Mindy said.

We followed hesitantly and before we could get to the front door it burst open.

“Hurry up get in here,” a big redhead said, ushering us quickly inside.

In a sleeveless white T-shirt and with green tattoos up and down his arms our host looked like a grown up Howdy Doody gone bad. If Buffalo Bob were still alive he would have gagged him with his red handkerchief, put him over his knee and beat the snot out of him. Or perhaps these were just the feelings I’d fostered for the red headed marionette and was displacing them on our host, for I never liked Howdy Doody and as a child often awoke screaming from a reoccuring nightmare in which Howdy Doody chased me with a hairdryer that shot flames.

“Where’s Sue?” Mindy asked.

“In the bathroom, she’ll be out in a minute. Come on in we can wait in the living room,” the grown Howdy Doody said, motioning us forward. His actions were quick and agitated, abrupt. He was pure twitching force, and from the get go I didn’t like him.

I looked at the Weasel and he shrugged. Doody led us into the living room which was a lit by a single naked bulb. The glow cast by this flickering bulb was scarcely enough to light the room and in fact left the corners powdered in a surreal blackness that revealed only the edges of pizza boxes, crushed cans, and other debris.

“Hey nice to meet you,” Howdy Doody said. He grasped my hand and squeezed hard. I squeezed back and he relented. I pulled back my jacket and exposed my brass knuckle belt buckle. He pretended not to see it and grabbed the Weasel’s hand.

Trance music, mixed with a thick bass beat and spiraling pipe organs, emanated from a massive pair of speakers on the far side of the room. Doody caught me staring at them.

“Those are Polk Audio LSi25’s. Those babies were twenty-five hundred a pair. I bought them with my combat pay.”

“Good purchase,” the Weasel said, rolling his eyes.

The speakers seemed so out of place amongst the Sanford and Son junk heap that surrounded us. The stereo itself, composed of high end Denon components, also seemed out of place. For one it was immense and looked like a towering alien civilization and secondly it was spotless, no doubt lovingly cleaned by the husky redhead. It even looked like the carpet around the stereo was vacuumed but only a space several feet in diameter surrounding it. I knew then that Doody was definitely mad.

“Sue,” Doody cried.

A thin but shapely brunette dressed in a white mini-T that said Pornstar on the front appeared in the room. Her mouth was incredibly large, so large in fact that it seemed she’d borrowed Julia Robert’s lips and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s teeth to go out on the town that night. Despite the obvious mismatch of Sue’s mouth to her face, when melded with a small and slightly upturned nose and bottomless blue eyes, the effect was visually dazzling. She was a stone cold cutie and I knew the Weasel would approve.

“Sue, you and Mindy are going to score some coke, heroin and ecstasy,” Doody said, his mouth moving so fast his lips and teeth blurred.

“That sounds like the sing songy rhyme thing from the Wizard of Oz. You know, Lions and tigers and bears oh my. Heroin, coke and ecstasy oh my…You’re not going to do all that stuff together? That sounds sort of dangerous. Why don’t we pass on the hard stuff tonight. I’ll run down the road and grab a couple of six-packs,” I said.

Doody ignored me. He angrily wiped his nose with the back of his fist. The phony good manners he’d been displaying were quickly disappearing.

“Yeah, cool,” Sue said, shakily lighting a cigarette.

“I’m going with you,” Mindy said.

“Maybe we ought to go,” the Weasel said.

If the Weasel meant we ought to go back to the Christmas party I was all for it. There was no way I was going on any drug deal. My luck would place us smack dab in the center of the city’s biggest drug bust.

Mindy came up beside me and whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry I thought there was going to be other people here. I didn’t know he would be here. Please stay. We’ll be right back.”

I nodded. I noticed a photocopied picture on the floor beside the coffee table. It was of a bloated body lying in a street and it was being torn at by wild dogs. It wondered what in the Hell this macabre display indicated about Doody’s ID. Did it have a flat tire and was it spinning madly in circles over images of self hate? Were there bodies stored under the floor boards? Was there an arm and leg casserole in the refrigerator? I grasped my brass knuckles belt buckle.

“Okay,” Sue said, “Let’s go.”

The girls hurried off. The front door slammed shut.

“You know about the drugs. You’re part of the family now…you do want to be part of the family don’t you?”

“Sure I love families. We’re not going to have Christmas dinner together are we? I haven’t had time to shop for gifts,” I said.

He pulled up his white T-shirt and pulled a gun out and pointed it between my eyes. I could fell the cold steel of the barrel pressing against my skin. I needed to get the fuck out of that place but knew that this lunatic would just assume shoot us as let us go.

“Whoa, watch that gun big guy,” the Weasel said.

“Ha,” Doody screamed. I nearly jumped out of my Burmese jungle boots. “I like you, you’re funny.” He smiled but in an instant it disappeared from his face. The gun returned to my forehead. “Don’t ever fuck me over.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “Fucking people over is overrated. I prefer to negotiate, to get to the essence of the matter. You’ll never catch me running out on anyone…unless, there’s an opossum involved. Those things freak me out.”

“Opossums are ugly,” the Weasel said.

Doody put the gun back in his waistband and picked up sword lying on the coffee table. He leaned over the coffee table and cut a line of coke as long as a cereal box and then positioned his huge nostril over it and inhaled. He shot up from the table his eyes watering.

“You really stove pipe that stuff in,” I said. “You’re making a lot of Columbians very happy right now.”

I noticed another photocopied photo of a dead body on the side of the television and several on the walls.

“You have an odd decorating sense,” I said. “Post-modern…what’s up with all the dead bodies?”

“I’m a Marine. They’re all the people I killed in Iraq. You see that one on the side of the TV? I held my gun up to that bitch’s temple and blew a hole in her head.”

“Well you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” I said, examining the room for possible escape routes.

The Weasel’s eyes were wide. He was discreetly gesturing towards the door with his thumb.

“I don’t even know if she was the enemy,” Doody said. “She jumped right out in front of me and I just reacted.”

He spun with the sword in his hand and hit a stack of pizza boxes. Cardboard and pizza crusts scattered across the room.

“Whoa, watch it there Captain Kidd you’re liable to cut something vital off,” I said, taking a step back.

Doody laid his sword on the coffee table and walked over to the Weasel. I knew better than to flinch or look away, these are signs of weakness and animals like this guy can smell weakness from a mile away.

He put his arm around the Weasel’s shoulders. Tears were streaming down his face. This guy was a fucking mess. He massaged the Weasel’s shoulders in a way that made me uncomfortable.

“That’s quite a grip,” the Weasel said. “You know it doesn’t seem like the girls are coming back I think we’d better get going.”

Doody jumped back as if he’d been bitten in the ass by a Schnauzer.

“You can’t go out the front door,” he said reaching into his waistband. “This place is under surveillance. Didn’t you see that panel van parked outside?”

“No, I didn’t see a panel van. What’s the back door look like?” I asked.

“No, that’s no good,” he said, looking about madly, “Wait here.”

Doody grabbed his sword and sprinted up the stairs.

“I say we get the fuck out of here before we get stabbed or shot,” the Weasel said. He lit a Camel and drew on it heavily.

“I’m worried if we leave this loon will come after us,” I said. “If we take some of his drugs maybe he’ll let us go without incident. I’ve never done ecstasy.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind? Did you see the way he was groping me? I am not going to take ecstasy and especially not around this guy.”

The sound of heavy boots coming down the stairs four at a time let us know Doody was on his way back.

“They’re here. I saw the cops. They’re in a panel van down the street. They’re here to bust me. I opened the window in the bathroom upstairs we’ll have to jump out into a tree and shimmy down it.”

He bent down, snorted another long line of coke. “Come on,” he cried pointing his sword towards the steps.

I wasn’t sure whether or not Doody was just being paranoid or whether there actually were cops outside but I wasn’t waiting around to find out. At the very least we would be able to get out of the house and away from him.

“What the Hell are we going to do?” the Weasel asked.

“We’ll go out the window. Here eat these,” I said, shoving hash brownies at him.

“What do you want me to do with all these?”

“Eat them. If there are cops out there and we get caught with them we’ll end up in a jail cell with this loon.”

I didn’t need to say anything else. We both began stuffing hash brownies.

“What are you eating?” Doody asked when we reached the open window at the top of the stairs.

“Brownies want some?”

“I never put that poison in my body,” he said and hoisted himself out the window and into the tree.

We watched as Doody climbed down the tree. By the time he hit the ground we’d finished the last of the brownies.

“Okay, you’re turn, I said.

“My turn? That must be fifty feet down.”

“I know but if I go first who will be here to call an ambulance if you fall.”

The Weasel pondered this. He’s a bright guy but the hash and alcohol were working his brain.

“Okay,” he finally said, “I’ll go first.”

I watched as the Weasel made his way out onto the branches of the tree.

“Come on,” he said.

“All right calm down,” I’ll be right out.”

I took a deep breath and hoisted my self out onto a large branch using the frame of the window to steady myself. The Weasel had worked his way to the trunk and then inched down to the next big branch. By the time I made it to the trunk the hash brownies had hit me full force.

“Weasel,” I said, hugging the trunk, “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Me either. I’m afraid to let go of the trunk.”

“Me too. Maybe we should go back.”

“I can’t go back. I can’t move.”

“Me either.”

I chanced a look down and saw that Doody was gone.

“What are we going to do?” the Weasel asked.

“Hang on,” I said.

I looked out over the city, at the dots of light, at the silhouettes of buildings, at the vastness of it all and despite having eaten somewhere in the neighborhood of two pounds of hash brownies the only thing I could think of was food.

“Do you have your cell phone on you?” I asked.

“Why?” the Weasel asked.

“I wanted to order a pizza,” I said.